Thirteen months ago, I left my job. We sold all our things. My ex-wife and I hit the road with our three kids. We don’t have anywhere to live. Our kids don’t go to school.

We left “the matrix” in another important way, too. When we left America, we drained our bank accounts and retirement accounts of cash and converted all our savings into gold and silver.

Why did we do this?

We don’t want to be “in the system” anymore… especially while we’re on sabbatical.

I’m not going to get into it now, but the system is unbalanced and unstable. One of these days, there’s going to be a collapse.

We’re going to sit on the sidelines, in precious metals, until it’s safe to return to the financial system. And when it finally is safe, we’ll sell all our gold and invest in stocks, where our money will stay – I hope – generating bigger and bigger dividends for the rest of our lives.

How will we know precisely when it’s safe?

The ultimate barometer of systemic “health” is the Dow-to-Gold ratio.

The Dow is the aggregated stock price of 30 of the largest, most iconic businesses in the world.

Gold is an inert metal. It’s the investment equivalent of hiding your money under the floorboards.

By presenting these two as a ratio, I get a barometer.

I’ve looked through 100 years of stock market history. When the system has “reset” in the past, the ratio went below 5, depending on how bad things got.

When things were ripping, as they were in the late 1990s, for example, the ratio got as high as 41.

The thing about this barometer is, unlike other price series in financial markets, it doesn’t bounce around much. Once it begins a trend, it tends to stay in that trend for many years.

The charts below tell the whole story.

Chart

When we started our travels and arrived in Africa in November 2018, the barometer was above 22.

Today, it is at 19.

It’s falling again.

I believe this is the start of a longer trend… a signal that the system is going to break soon.

But while we wait for the Dow-to-Gold ratio’s “rendezvous with destiny,” we’ve been seeing the world.

I’m writing to you from central Bangkok.

A dear old friend from my university days is hosting us at his apartment. It has a lazy river, two pool tables, two Ping-Pong tables, a foosball table, and boxes and boxes of toys, dolls, and Legos.

And two full-time staff (a chauffeur and a housekeeper).

And a magnificent view of Bangkok.

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Tom and family enjoying a meal

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Tom’s daughter, Penny

India is an intense place to travel as a family. We were there for four months. I am relieved that we completed the trip alive, healthy, and intact.

We left India last night. The first thing we did when we arrived at our friend’s apartment was take long, hot showers, eat big bowls of noodles, and then sleep for 12 hours. Today, we’re washing all our clothes.

Staying with my friend in Bangkok after completing India feels like we climbed Mount Everest and have now returned to base camp to drink beer and sunbathe.

Tom Dyson